Why the insistence on a particular word count? Why not just write it and let it be the length it wants to be? Because it's a science fiction book.

In a recent #askagent chat on Twitter, I put the question to Janet Reid and Laura Bradford, well known and well respected literary agents.

Janet's answer was succinct:

Laura's answer was more expansive, but agreed with Janet's:

My book is about a superhero who does battle with the forces of evil using the power of words: freezing people in place with a full stop, slicing through steel chains with a cutting remark, blocking a blast from a plasma cannon with a flat refusal, etc. All of the superpowers are hard sci-fi, with technological underpinnings, and there is plenty of high-tech gadgetry to go with the puns, wordplay and double entendres.

27 comments:

Wow. Color me stupid; I had no idea there were set lengths for a given genre. Do/Did Stephen King, J. K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien know/knew this? That's probably where most of Heinlein's YA stuff was at, but SIASL? Or Frank Herbert's Dune books? Or is this one of those rules you can break once you succeed?

If you look at the word counts of first or second books by what are now household names, you see that they fit these guidelines pretty closely. Only later, after they have proven to be immensely popular, will they be allowed to spread into gigantic books. Some, like Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling, really could have used a more aggressive editor on some of the later books.

But what the hell, is Scholastic going to argue with J.K. Rowling over cuts and edits? Keeping her happy is more important that trimming a book that is going to be a blockbuster, regardless.

Oh, Stephen King has gotten away with some overblown writing too because he's the 600-pound (moneymaking) gorilla in the room.

I'm assuming that some of the writers I love were around and just hadn't made a big enough name for me to have heard of their earlier stuff, which is why they get away with the doorstops. I'm thinking Umberto Eco here (Name of the Rose (600 pp.) or Foucault's Pendulum (530 pp) - take your pick. One of my favorite books, The Tenants of Time by Thomas Flanagan, runs 800 pp. I have to believe there's SOME give in those counts if you've produced something really worth reading as is, or close to it.

I should point out, especially with Eco, that the books are all framed to be "literary", but "Rose" is a mystery and "Foucault" could have just as easily been written by Michael Crichton (although it wouldn't exactly have been the same book, naturally).

I tend to write short and have faced the problem of too short for the market myself. I was not surprised to see that SF&F was on the high end of the spectrum. Personally, from a lot of the SF&F I've read lately, I think a large part of it could use some serious parring down. When I start skipping whole paragraphs and pages just to move along it's a good indication there is a lot of fluff between those covers. Too bad more folks don't have the "Whatever the story requires" attitude.~jon

The paragraphs of fluff are certainly an indication of bad writing, or a thin idea stretched too far. Some stories can be made novel length, others are just a padded-out novella.

I could see it as a challenge for an editor to say, "Make this book 20,000 words longer." You could do that with extra descriptions of characters and setting, or you could add it real subplots and action.

Sure, I get that established writers can do whatever they want but the rest of us, well, we've got to be good girls and boys and keep the editors happy. Thing is, though, what would make an editor happier - a manuscript that's the length that it needs to be to work well as a piece of art or one the author's stretched/condensed to fit word-length guidelines and ruined in the process? Surely a better-written manuscript is always preferable to one that plays by the rules? And who's your responsibility to, at the end of the day - the work or some editor?

Ultimately, my responsibility is my vision for my work. Let's say I write awesome stuff, but no one ever sees it because it's impossible to sell. Is that better than a wider distribution of a constrained work that many more people will see because I'm writing within the specs of the publishers?

mARkeT - ART must exist with the space allowed by the market. Once I get famous enough to forcibly expand that space, I will.

I suspect this matters more to agents and editors and less to readers. Readers are a diverse bunch when it comes to book length. I've seen people turn down 800 page paperbacks because of length, and ditto for 80 page novellas.

Me, one of my favourite books of all time is Company by Samuel Beckett, but more recently I absolutely loved the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy. Go figure.

I agree length will help determine if a first-timer gets published (it almost quashed Stephanie Meyers' publication deal), but I don't think it's as clear how that translates into a book's attractiveness to readers.

In regards to book length it depends on who you're publishing with. I publish with an indie press that uses Print on Demand printers. Page count is something to consider when you think about sales. If the book is too short, your price (generally about 20.00) will make people think it's too short for that amount of money. But a trickier scenario is the book that's too long. My second book, Runs in Good Condition, was about 130k words which drove the price of the paperback up TEN DOLLARS. I'm not sure it would have made a difference in the length of my book had I known that, but it is something to consider— especially if your book is not going to be published by a traditional press.

VERY good info, Mon, thanks! I considered doing a POD run of "Blood Picnic", but the costs were too high. A sweet spot for it is, guess what, around 80 - 100 K.

I'm glad to have your real-world experience here. As I said on twitter, experience in the real world is like a powerful laxative: after only a little, you're less likely to be full of shite. I can't wait for my dose.

Interesting info here, Tony. Where can we find guidelines (or requirements) for other genres?

Just as a datapoint, White Pickups (paranormal) is running 96k words in its current draft, and I doubt that it will grow or shrink much. The sequel is going to clock in around 70k words. I'd prefer 80k, but the story is the length that it is.

Your approach is smart, Tony. Later in your career when you know you can move more copies and recover printing costs, longer works are more reasonable. Coming into the field conservatively, with a damned good novel in the mid-range of the genre's length expectations, is just one more thing going for you as you offer it to publishers.

It would be nice if the world only cared about the book being as long as the story required, and it is annoying to compare oneself to other luminaries. There is no one standard. Patrick Rothfuss's debut Name of the Wind and George R.R. Martin's debut A Game of Thrones are both way the hell over the 120,000-word line. But you can't walk in expecting outlier treatment, especially if you aren't as connected as them.

Thanks, John. I did my homework, I'm working on the book, and am being conservative first time out. The first million is the toughest to make.

Also, I think sending in a book of 90K words signals to the agent & publisher that I've done my homework on word count lengths, so I'll most likely be reasonable when it comes to revisions. People are MUCH more likely to work with you if they think you'll be easy to work with.

I didn't know about this either! I knew 50k was considered minimum, but didn't know all the other things about genre lengths, etc. However, almost all my favorite books by my favorite authors (each of the Hitchhiker books by Douglas Adams; Deathworld, Planet of the Damned, each of the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison, etc.) are about 50K (judging roughly by thickness, so if I'm wrong I'm in good company. I'm not saying I'm of their caliber (yet!) but just that the story takes as long as it takes, imo. :)

I think the industry would consider each of those to be more YA than sci-fi. The YA lengths are considerably shorter, 45K - 80K. As with other books, though, later books in a successful series will run longer, once the publisher doesn't feel like they're taking much of a risk.

Yes, if you've seen that 90K to 100K is an acceptable word count for your particular type of novel, then you've certainly picked a good spot to aim for. As has been said in other comments, best-selling authors need not worry about word count, but those of us who haven't yet hit that status need to pay close attention to such considerations. Good post, Tony!

Wow I had no idea that this criteria existed at all. When I wrote the first draft of my fantasy fic for children it was around the 60,000 words, subsequent edits have driven it down to 48,000 and now its classed as a novella and not a novel - I think it strange to have to write to a certain word count, a story takes as long as it takes to tell itself, all the rest appears to me to be superfluous words.

I guess that I'm just a creative soul and don't think about the business side - my downfall maybe, plus when I started to write four years ago I never really had thought I could publish anything, let alone anyone want to read it - I've surprised myself on both accounts. ^_^

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